#52 Ancestor Challenge 2019, Week 30 – Waller-Herndon
The Waller-Herndon Question
Note: The Waller Herndon question finally had an easy answer. Research on the Wallers of Virginia proved that Col. John Waller’s sister was not Mary Waller who married Edward Herndon because Mary Elizabeth Waller died at age two in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England: John Waller, her father, was later interred in the same tomb he commissioned for his daughter. The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Forde made the decision to include the Wallers in the ancestry of Anne Herndon, probable daughter of Edward Herndon, in response to rumors that never die. This author cannot discount a probability that Edward Herndon married a Waller.
The report will attempt to identify Mary Waller, who married Edward Herndon. Mary is believed to have come from England with her brother, Col. John Waller. Much has been written about this family, some of which is speculative and lacking documentation. The counties in which the Waller and Herndon families lived were “burned” counties, having lost their records to disasters of men and nature. These include New Kent, Caroline, and King William Counties. This lack of records hampers the study of relationships.
To become oriented to the place and period relevant to these ancestors, Internet searches were made. In Ancestry.com’s World Tree project, no less than 437 postings surfaced for Edward Herndon and Mary Waller. A sampling of these has been included here, showing that Edward lived from about 1678 to 1758 in Virginia. His presumed wife, Mary Waller, is believed to have been born 23 May 1674 in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England. Eight children are listed for the couple.[1]The International Genealogical Index (IGI) shows a birth date of Mary Waller, matching that of the World Tree Project. Mary’s parents are believed to be John Waller and Mary Pomfret.[2]
The original parish registers of Newport Pagnell do indeed show that Mary Waller was baptized on that date, probably born a few days or weeks earlier. The priest’s notation tells that she was the “daughter of John” but does not include her mother’s name.[3]The IGI contains a posting concerning the marriage of John Waller to Mary Pomfret, revealing that the marriage took place 13 January 1669 in Walton Parish.[4]These records do show indeed that John Waller and Mrs. Mary Pomfret married in Walton Parish.[5]
It appears that John married a young widow. Because John and Mary were married in 1669, they were likely born sometime in the 1640s. The immigration record showing a Mary Waller coming to America would have occurred when Mary was quite elderly, perhaps eighty years old. The sources for the immigration records, in which Mary Waller’s name appears, tell that these 1723 immigrants were felons, being banished from England. It does not seem likely that this Mary Waller could have been the widow of Dr. John Waller of Newport Pagnell. She could not be traveling with a group of felons, nor at such an advanced age.
Another point against this Mary being the widow of Dr. John Waller of Newport Pagnell is that Mary’s name appears in the records several years before 1723. In 1720, she received four hundred acres on the south side of the Mattaponi Creek, adjacent to John Waller and Phillip Todd.[6]The actual patent bears the date of 21 February 1720, and patents were often issued a few years after the initial survey and occupation of the land.[7]Dr. John Waller of Newport Pagnell did not die until 1723, so it defies logic that his wife would leave him in his old age to go to America.
A detailed study of the Waller family, “The Wallers of Endfield, King William County, Virginia,” by Andrew Lewis Riffe, gives documented information on the family. Dr. John Waller’s will was written 21 August 1716 and has been abstracted into the report. He named his sons Benjamin, William, Thomas, John, and Edmund, and his daughter, Jemima. No Mary was included in the will either as his wife or his daughter. This strongly suggests that his wife had predeceased him. It also strikes a blow at the theory that Edward Herndon’s wife was Mary Waller, daughter of John Waller. John would have been about seventy years old in 1716. He died in August of 1723.[8]
Riffe’s excellent treatise is careful not to jump to conclusions or to accept any undocumented information as fact. He points out that John Waller Jr., the son of John Waller and Mary Pomfret, had arrived in America by 1696. In May of that year, he had surveyed the 1029 acres in King and Queen County that would become Endfield, his home place. Sixty-five years later, John Waller Jr.’s son, John, brought suit concerning the division of Endfield among John Jr.’s heirs. A plat map was produced, showing lines dividing the land between John Waller, Thomas Waller, Mary Waller, and Benjamin Waller. Mr. Riffe states, “It was Thomas Waller’s and Mary Waller’s portions of this land that John Waller (their father, the original owner) sold to Benjamin Waller.”
This implies that Mary Waller, found mentioned frequently in the land records, was the daughter or married daughter-in-law of John Waller (Col.). Mr. Riffe makes no attempt to identify her further. He does make reference to two articles in Virginia historical magazines, which supposedly give a strong case for Mary Waller being the wife of Edward Herndon. The first comes from the William and Mary College Quarterly. The author of this article, whose name is not shown, asserts that the will of Dr. John Waller of Newport Pagnell contains a phrase that refers to the eldest daughter, Mary, living in Virginia. This is incorrect, as Riffe’s transcription of the will contained no mention of Mary. In fact, the only married daughter in the will was Jemima. The author of this article goes on to show that Mrs. Mary Waller lived near Edward Herndon, providing strong circumstantial evidence that Edward had married her daughter, Mary Waller.[9]These arguments are weak, based on the reasons already given.
Riffe’s treatise also makes reference to The Herndon Family of Virginia by John Goodwin Herndon. This book, part of a multivolume set, was located in the Family History Library’s collection. The author cites the source of the Herndon-Waller marriage to Mr. Moncure D. Conway. The same assumption underlies this theory, that Mrs. Mary Waller, still alive in 1729, was the mother of Mary Waller, born in 1674, and therefore, the wife of Edward Herndon because he lived nearby. The supporting evidence for Mr. Herndon’s assertion is a letter written in 1787 to Joseph Herndon, a grandson of Edward. In the letter, he referred to his cousin, Jack Waller.[10]It seems that by 1787, after two more generations since Edward had come along, there would have been plenty of opportunities for the Herndon and Waller families to intermarry. This bit of evidence seems insufficient to conclude that Edward Herndon had married Mary Waller. Although such may indeed be the case, it seems that hasty judgment may have come into play early on. Once such conclusions get into print, they are circulated and eventually carved into stone. Edward may have married a Waller relative, but nothing has been found to indicate that his wife was named Mary.
In summary, these are the points against the supposition that Edward Herndon’s wife was Mary Waller, daughter of John Waller and Mary Pomfret.
• Dr. John Waller of England died in 1723. His will did not mention a daughter, Mary, suggesting she could have predeceased him. His will also made no mention of his wife, which would be very peculiar had she still been alive.
• Dr. John’s wife, Mary Pomfret Waller, would not leave him before his death, at the age of nearly eighty, and go to America.
• It is highly unlikely she would still be alive in 1739 at nearly one hundred years of age.
• No document exists that even gives Edward Herndon’s wife’s first name as Mary.
• There were several Wallers in the area, and by 1720, a new generation had come to maturity in America. One of these younger Wallers could have left a widow named Mary.
It is very unlikely that any new evidence will be located concerning these families, especially considering that most of the records have been destroyed in the counties where the Wallers lived. Research at this point focuses on the careful interpretation of the existing records, with a skeptical eye toward published genealogies.
Further commentary by Cynthia Forde on the Waller-Herndon question: Dr. John Waller and his wife, Mary Pomfret Waller, did indeed have a daughter named Mary Elizabeth Waller. Dr. John Goodwin Herndon, Fellow, American Society of Genealogists, wrote the definitive Herndon history with the theory that Mary P. Waller moved to America after the death of her husband in 1723. Dr. Herndon located a deed transfer from Edward Herndon to his son adjoining Mrs. Mary Waller’s property.
A family tradition dating back to the mid-nineteenth century believed this theory to be true. Recent research has raised questions about the family tradition and John G. Herndon’s conclusions suggesting that Mrs. Mary Waller named on the deed was Mary Lewis (Waller), the daughter of Colonel John Waller; the property was given to her by Colonel John. “This is an example of a supposition becoming accepted fact without adequate documentation, even by expert researchers,” according to Melanie Rigney, Brown Book Company editor. “There’s a tendency to believe that, as the famous line from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance says, ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’” For this reason, the Waller history was included: Edward Herndon may have married a Waller descendant, although it is certain he did not marry the daughter of Dr. John Waller because Mary Elizabeth Waller’s death record was located in England.
13 January 1669: John Waller marries Mary Pomfret at the Church of St. Michael in Walton Parish, Buckinghamshire, England (Source: The Register of the Parish of Walton in Buckinghamshire 1598–1812; printed privately for the Bucks Parish Register Society by permission of Algernon E. Tollemache, B.A., Rector of Walton, p. 18). It is possible that this was a second marriage for Mary Pomfret.
1671–1684: John and Mary Pomfret Waller settle at Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire, located about fifty miles northwest of London. Here they have a family of nine, born over a period of thirteen years.
6 August 1723: Dr. John Waller is buried in a tomb he designed at the Church of Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England. He is buried in the tomb of his daughter Mary, ending the rumor that Mary traveled to the colony of Virginia and married Edward Herndon.
Mary Pomfret Waller’s journey to the colony of Virginia after her husband’s death has long been a family legend. A deed exists in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, dated November 1724, that describes the property of Edward Herndon next door to Mrs. Mary Waller. For that reason, early Waller historians concluded Mary Pomfret Waller lived out her days with her son, Colonel John Waller and her daughter, Mary, wife of Edward Herndon. They have erred.
[1]Ancestry.com. World Tree Project, Entry # 144421, 27 January 2005.
[2]family search.org. International Genealogical Index, Version 5.0, Individual Record of Mary Waller.
[3]Church of England Parish Registers, Newport Pagnell Parish Baptisms, Buckingham, England, 1671-1740.
[4]Family search.org. International Genealogical Index, Version 5.0, Individual Record of John Waller.
[5]Rev. Algernon E. Tollemache, The Register of the Parish of Walton (Near Bletchley), Buckinghamshire, 1598-1812(Bucks, Parish Register Society, 1902) p. 18.
[6]T.E. Campbell, A History of Caroline County, Virginia(Richmond, VA: Dietz Press, 1954), p. 309.
[7]Nell Marion Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, Volume Three 1695-1732(Richmond, VA: Virginia State Library, 1979).
[8]Andrew Lewis Riffe, “The Wallers of Endfield, King William County, Virginia” (http://www.alleylaw.net/riffe.html).
[9]“Waller,” William and Mary College Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3, July 1942, pp. 312-316.
[10]John Goodwin Herndon, The Herndon Family of Virginia(Philadelphia: privately published, 1947), pp. 7-10.
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